TuneIn launches premium service with ad-free radio, audiobooks

TuneIn is a sort of one-stop-shop for internet radio stations, letting you listen to local or international broadcasts over the internet. Now the company is launching a subscription service called TuneIn Premium.

For $8 per month, you get access to ad-free radio stations, live sports broadcasts, and a library of audiobooks.

Like the free version of TuneIn, the new TuneIn Premium service is available through Android, iOS, and Windows apps. Or you can listen in a web browser.

But paying subscribers won’t see banner ads, and they can access 600 ad-free radio stations, sports broadcasts from Major League Baseball and Barclays Premier League soccer (football), and 40,000 audiobooks from Penguin, Random House, Harper Collins, and Scholastic.

If all you care about is ad-free radio, I’m pretty sure you could already find some commercial-free radio stations through the free version of TuneIn. But TuneIn is reportedly working with terrestrial radio broadcasters on technology that will let the service insert songs automatically to cover up on-air commercial breaks.

You could also think of the ad-free radio as a bonus feature… the audiobook feature alone could be worth the price of admission. Professionally recorded audiobooks tend to be more expensive than text-only books, which means if you listen to a book or more per month, you could save a lot of money using a subscription service like TuneIn Premium.

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The problem is the Idiots in the U.S. media industry BLOCK content in regions outside the U.S. So I end up paying $8 bucks a month for a lot of – SILENCE.